In your opinion what effects can films have on society? What can a filmmaker do for society?
He can do a lot. Entertain. Tell stories in such a way that the moviegoer is entertained and afterwards is no stupider; he can make various things clear to him or make him want to get various things straight for himself, he can express fears. For others. If no one does that we’d withdraw into the kind of silence in which sooner or later you become a moron. Film can give the moviegoer the courage to continue expressing things, taking a position on them, and making it known. I do feel that film as a medium can be effective in all sorts of ways. And it’s always a means of entertainment, and should remain that, too. Like literature, which is also supposed to be fun, or music, quite aside from the effect it can have.
–”I’ve changed along with the characters in my films: An Interview with Rainer Werner Fassbinder.” Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 14 No. 2 (May 1992)
Some still images from my favorite Fassbinder movies:
Chinese Roulette
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Fear of Fear
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Art, Fassbinder, film, film-going, method, story-telling
Hi,
thought you might be interested in some archival images of plumage sweatshops in NY from the 1920′s that I am making into a ‘kind-of’ movie for the exhibition “Fashioning Feathers” I am curating.
http://merlepatchett.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/spectral-geographies-and-experimental-historiography/
I think they really fit with your ‘Archiving the City’ theme. The photographs are taken from L. W. Hines photo-documentary series of working conditions in NY and you can view the full collection at the NYPL Digital Gallery.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?num=60&word=col%5Fid%3A175&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=images&sLevel=&sLabel=Lewis%20Wickes%20Hine%3A%20Documentary%20Photographs%2C%201905%2D1938&imgs=20&pNum=
Merle